by Rose Jenster
I am called Henry, though my full given name is Josiah Henry Rogers, because I am in a plain-dealing business out West and these frontiersmen brook less nonsense even than your father. As we’re on the topic of names, I’ve a sister called Opal, which ought to tell you that my father, a symphony conductor, who named her, is the impractical one with the head for poetry in my clan.
I hail from Philadelphia and came West in my youth to find my own way. I have a way with horses and break pairs for driving in my spare time. I am an avid rider and judge of horseflesh, of which my stable has much. Do you ride? Would you learn to ride a horse if you have not had opportunity with your city upbringing?
While I’ve made my inn and stable a prosperous concern, I’ve not found much in the way of human companionship out here. It seems my subscription to the lending library is not enough of culture or amusement, but it is all that is on offer here. I am fond of music but there is little opportunity to indulge that interest outside of church hymns, though our congregation has a piano now, a bit out of tune but a piano all the same.
You say that you are bookish and shy—I am as well, though the people of the town would not know it. My business requires me to know all the news, to be friendly and sociable, but it is not my nature, I believe. I’m of a retiring temperament in that respect and would much prefer a book. I have read Dickens but find his novels a bit sentimental. Do you know Goethe? What sort of poetry do you enjoy? I confess I do not care for William Blake, and I was a recalcitrant student of Marlowe as a boy as well.
If the ramblings of a lonesome innkeeper have not alarmed you, do reply to my letter. I would know more of your interests. I do not mind if you call yourself an old maid as I suppose, at 29 years of age, I am a bit of one myself. That is a joke, although on paper it looks odd now. Forgive the familiarity of my making a joke in a letter of introduction. I find I would rather write to you than talk to the men at my inn just now, and I may have let my words run away with me. When you write to me, if you write to me, you may address me as Henry. May I call you “Leah,” or at least “not-Ophelia” as it seems strange to have confided so much in a person I must write to as Miss Weaver?
With hope,
Josiah Henry Rogers
Leah was smiling as she folded the letter and pressed it to her heart, shutting her eyes. For nineteen nights as she'd said her prayers, she had asked her mother to send her a husband. She hoped it was not blasphemy to pray to her mother after she prayed to Jesus, but she knew that good, devoted woman was an angel and would be watching over her only daughter. She hoped her mother could see her now; how happy, how hopeful she felt. Leah told herself to be calm, as her father always had when she was carried away by enthusiasm.
A serious child, she had indulged in occasional flights of fancy that he felt it his duty to curb. Once she had asked him for a hundred composition books from the shop and he’d asked her what they were for…she told him, at age nine, that she intended to copy out the Bible by hand and post the composition books to little children in far-off countries who didn’t know about Jesus. She’d been deeply disappointed when he told her that those little children couldn’t read English and she’d be better off saving her weekly pennies for the missionary collection.
Leah composed herself, reread the letter, and set to pen a reply.
Dear Henry,
Now that we are introduced by your letter, I may call you that. I received your response in my hands less than an hour ago and here I sit, replying already. I confess that everything you say gives me the utmost hope that we might suit one another well.
I do not ride and I confess a bit of a fear of horses. They are so very large and I am small. I will trust you to teach me to ride if ever we meet.
I have read some Goethe. My favorite is the sonnets of Mr. Shakespeare, but it may shock you to know that one of my most precious possessions is my mother’s copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. She persuaded my father to buy it for her when it the 1867 edition came out, and years later, as she lay dying, she had me read it out to her again. That is how I became acquainted with his very powerful and natural poetry. Much of it is shocking, of course, but you must permit at least my sentimental attachment to the volume.
Of our contemporary writers, I like the works of Robert Browning and I have read a bit of Longfellow. The novels of Sir Walter Scott were the solace of my youth and I have read Gulliver’s Travels every spring since my eleventh birthday. It seems such a springlike novel, so perfect for new beginnings. Now that is fanciful, though if I can forgive your odd jokes, I suppose you might forgive my odd fancies in kind.
I have never seen the mountains and I find myself dreaming of them now, though Montana must be as a foreign land to a girl bred in the bustle and stir of the city. Did you find it very different when you moved from Philadelphia?
You wrote that your own father is an orchestral conductor. How fascinating! Did you have opportunity to hear many symphonies and concertos as a child? I went once to the opera as a birthday treat and saw a performance of “Lohengrin,” which I mention because it was, I have read, first staged by Liszt in Weimar, Germany as an honor to Goethe whom you referenced. I found the production to be grand and otherworldly and the Bridal Chorus was very moving indeed. My mother taught me some piano when I was a child and I learned a bit of Beethoven. I could pick out a fair “Für Elise” and a few hymns before she was too ill to teach me any longer.
My dear mother succumbed to consumption when I was a girl but I am quite healthy myself. Her loss has been the great sadness in my otherwise fortunate life. My father kept a stationery shop and I went to school until my mother’s illness made her unable to keep the house. At that time, my father brought over an Irish girl to clean and cook for us and I cared for my mother, eventually withdrawing from school until after her passing to tend her. She liked to be read to and I became acquainted with Evelina and the novels of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen in this way.
Books were our retreat together, a happy place inhabited by us two and free from worry and sickness. It is for this reason that I escape in a story when I am overcome by real life. A student of mine has given me considerable worry and has stopped attending class. Instead of fretting over it or even (Lord forgive me) praying for him, I am reading Dickens, which is like an old friend to me now. I may live in a busy city but I have no more confidantes, no more like-minded friends than you have in the wilds of Montana.
Forgive my long letter. It is easier for me to write than to talk, although I am perfectly happy to converse with those who know me. Are you—is it forward to ask how many other ladies have answered your advertisement and with how many others you correspond? I do not ask for gossip’s sake, only to know what I may reasonably hope. If you have many correspondents, I mustn’t expect a letter very often, whereas if only a few of us are writing you, I might look in the post every few weeks with the promise of a new letter.
With answering hope,
Not-Ophelia
She signed the letter with the little nickname he’d given her in his letter, thinking it might form a link between them, a personal connection of some sort. Impetuously, she kissed the letter and sealed it. She dreamt sweet dreams of far-off mountains that night and awaited his next message. Though she had indicated she would only check the post every few weeks, she kept a faithful vigil each day, hoping unreasonably for a letter even before hers could have reached him. One day her expectation was rewarded with one that must have been mailed before hers was even received.
Dear Leah,
I have not yet heard from you. That is not meant as a reproach, as I know the mails take much time to reach across this great mass of land. It is only that I am anxious to hear from you. Not anxious, I think, but expectant, perhaps excited, if that were not a juvenile impulse unbefitting a man of business. Therefore if I were excited I would certainly not own to the fact.
There is much I do not own to here. The postmaster knows that I subscribe to the lending library but
no one else does. I take the agricultural papers as a matter of course so I may keep informed of the events concerning my fellow citizens but it is of no interest to me in itself. I order some titles by mail to own. It was the last time I filled out a catalog form to secure the newest of Mark Twain that I wondered why might I not order a bride with the same spirit, as other men have done? Select a volume I would like to read again and again as I have Mr. Twain’s Roughing It. Does it seem arrogant to suggest I may shop for a wife in the same way? I do not mean it as an insult, only I am sometimes flippant, careless in my speech and I revere books, so do not think me irreverent in my discussing you as just such a wished-for item I might order.
Reading is not a pastime much approved in this region. So much of life out here is rough and uncivilized. Men, if they have leisure time, will spend it whittling, smoking, hunting for extra game. Physical strength is valued, as well as piety and modesty, so outside ideas and new philosophies are not welcomed with zeal. I keep my reading to myself, but I may talk of it with you. I ride around the countryside. I have a favorite mount, a stallion I call Dionysius, that I bought at auction two years ago for a bargain after being told he was unrideable. The owner had tried to break him but failed, only managing to injure his mouth with a large bit. I trained him myself and I ride him bareback, as it seemed he was most frightened of the bridle and saddle. I will not expect you to ride without a proper ladies’ saddle, though. Apart from Indians, I am the only man in Montana, I believe, who rides bareback…men around Billings think it too risky.
I debated with myself three nights altogether as to whether it would distress you to receive another long letter from me before you had an opportunity to reply to the first. Ultimately, I decided that if you were to bear with one such as me for any time at all, you would have to be more robust in your sensibilities than to be prim and proper about my waiting a decorous interval before writing again.
A bit about my life here—I have made it sound restrictive, I fear, as if Montana were populated by ignorant ruffians. That is not the case at all. The Northern Pacific Railroad has made Billings a major rail hub, so many people who are moving West come here. My inn has prospered as a stopping place for those visiting relatives or needing a place to rest before traveling further than the rail line goes. I sell and rent horses and wagons as well, which is a booming business.
In the next year, I expect to build on to the inn—a large front room and a kitchen to serve as a restaurant. With the shortage of womenfolk, the men eat whatever they can fry up in a single pan and would gladly part with their hard-earned money for a genuine home-cooked dinner. I see a great deal of opportunity in the expansion and I have money laid aside for it. I borrowed from a bank to start the inn and I was able to pay it all back the year the railroad came. My business is without debt. I make my home in the rooms behind the common room of the inn. There is a sitting room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. I employ two grooms and a stable master as well as a charwoman to clean the inn.
I came West on a diet of fatback and cornbread and was glad to have cabbages and potatoes from the garden once I got work as a shop assistant at a trading post in Coulson. The food here is abundant with wild game, cattle, and chickens to provide meat and plenty of eggs and milk and butter.
The mountains themselves are as beautiful as anything God’s made, I’ll wager, and the river Yellowstone, when not clogged with riverboat traffic from far-off St. Louis, is a glorious sight to behold. The reason I came was not for mountains. It was for a chance to be my own man and see what I could make of myself. If I may be boastful, I am proud of the man I’ve become. Though I take moods like any man, I have a successful business and a comfortable home to offer.
If you will look kindly on my suit, I would ask for your consideration now as a husband. My plan (I am a practical man, after all) is to send you a train ticket and ask that you come to Billings to stay in Mrs. Hostleman’s boarding house. We could get to know one another and try courting, see if we suit. In due course, we would have the banns announced at church and wed. If you do not like the look of me or my odd ways, there will be a return ticket enclosed in the letter as well. By your staying with the respectable Mrs. Hostleman, your virtue will be unquestioned and if my plan fails you would be no worse off in the way of finding a husband than you were before.
I have read your letter so often it is soft in the creases from being unfolded and refolded and stored in my pocket. I’m not a man who is accustomed to having a sweetheart, but I find I like the idea of it and I like you especially, if I may be so bold as to say so. Your letter made you seem kind and practical and intelligent, all qualities I am looking for in a wife, not-Ophelia.
Think on it a while and write to me then. Consult your family about the propriety of my plan. I will be happy to have Mrs. Hostleman write a letter of introduction to reassure them if you like. She is a widow with children who refuses to marry again and keeps a clean, Christian establishment. This is no advertisement for Mrs. Hostleman, though. I hope you will like me better than the boarding house.
Sincerely,
Henry
Leah had tears in her eyes as she finished reading his letter. Henry had chosen her. She need not have worried that he had many handsomer women writing to him. He wanted her to come to Montana. He even offered her respectable accommodation while they got to know one another, afforded her the option of rejecting him and going home. It was so much more than she could have hoped for.
She pressed the letter between her palms reverently. She would keep this to herself, would tell Jane and Walter only after the term was done at school. She would notify the board of education at the end of term and tell her family the same day, she decided. This secret happiness felt too fragile, too new to share yet. Something might happen in the intervening weeks that prevented her travel or caused one or both of them to change their intentions. She didn’t want to expose this dream to the sunlight in case it evaporated before her eyes. She would keep it safe just this little while.
Dear Henry,
I have received your letter, unexpected as the loveliest things always are. My school term ends in one month. If you would be so kind as to book a train ticket after that time, I would be honored to accept it. I look forward to seeing the mountains and rivers of Montana Territory. I look forward most of all to seeing you. I confess that I quite fancy the idea of you riding Dionysius bareback…it sounds quite like something from the cowboy serials in the papers!
I hope you will not be disappointed when we meet. I am small and rather ordinary with brown hair. I did not inherit my mother’s blue eyes but I am told I have her smile. I am very shy, which you may not be able to discern from my letters. I grew up around a stationer’s shop and paper and pens are as natural to me as books, as breathing and walking and turning my face to the sun. You will find me quiet, but hopeful. I will bring my belongings with me, leaving nothing behind. This is a testament to my belief that I will find reason enough to remain in Montana by your side.
I have not read any of Mr. Twain’s books. I look forward to borrowing one from you if I may, so we could discuss it. Would you be agreeable to trying a favorite of my own by Miss Austen? I should so love to talk to someone about it, and not since my dear mother’s passing have I had such a friend.
Do write again and tell me more of your interests and occupations. I will await details of your plan. I shall not speak to this arrangement of ours to my family yet, though I believe a letter from the keeper of the boarding house would be a welcome reassurance. I am grateful for this chance and, if you will forgive another fancy of mine, I believe my mother had a hand in it from Above.
Wishing you well,
Leah (not-Ophelia)
In the weeks that followed, Leah Weaver positively bloomed. Her commonly pale cheek took on a becoming rosiness and she took more care in the arrangement of her hair. Instead of the plain low knot she favored, Leah trimmed a fashionable fringe with her sewing scissors and puffed and curled it across h
er forehead using Jane’s curling tongs. The fringe framed her heart-shaped face, and even her usually inattentive brother commented that she was looking well.
She took some of her quarter’s salary and had a few dresses made. For travel, she chose a sturdy wool dress in black with only a narrow braid at the wrists and high collar; a fitted jacket in a lovely shade of cranberry with a matching striped skirt; a snug basque bodice in serviceable gray with a flare at the hips; and a narrow skirt of the same fabric.
Leah indulged in a pretty dark green dress whose narrow skirt had a bustle in the back and was trimmed with braid and buttons. She had her mother’s love of pretty things, and so purchased a pair of heeled kidskin slippers to wear with her green dress instead of her practical boots. When the dresses were ready, she packed them in paper, unwilling to wear them before she traveled to Montana.
Henry’s letter came in answer to the lengthy missive she wrote before receiving his proposal. She read it again and again joyously.
Dear Leah (whom I hope soon to call MY Leah),
I spent many an afternoon in an empty hall listening to the orchestra rehearse under my father’s direction. My lack of musical aptitude was a disappointment to him, I believe. I have great appreciation for that art, however, and I count Bach as my favorite composer. I am not shocked by your interest in Mr. Whitman’s poetry. To thrive on the frontier of Montana Territory, you could not be a shrinking violet with very delicate sensibilities. Ladies are respected here, of course, but you will find more of the earthy side of daily life, with animal husbandry and whatnot. I should hate to think you would faint upon entering a stable or having to walk past the saloon on the way to Sunday services. It is better that you are well-read and know something of the world lest you find yourself shocked by the matter-of-factness in our way of life.
I am unfamiliar with some of the books you mention but I have ordered one of Jane Austen’s novels from my lending library since receiving your recommendation. I do like Gulliver’s Travels and would be happy to see your copy sitting beside my own on the shelf. I have no copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I read them at school as a boy and thought little of them, but a man’s eyes see differently.